Shh! Can You Hear the Bells Ringing?

The one part of church that my toddlers have always enjoyed is the sound of bells ringing at the moment that the priest consecrates the host.  If the kids were feeling bored or tired of sitting still, I could always whisper to them, right then, "Shh!  Can you hear the bells ringing?  Jesus is here in the bread!"  And a few minutes later, "Shh!  Did you hear the bells?  Jesus is here in the wine!"  Sometimes, the kids would respond with a wise, open-eyed nod or maybe a single word spoken sotto voce, "Jee-jus!"

On Easter, I get the same feeling of wonder that the kids get.  Jesus is here!  All through Lent, the Gloria is missing from Mass, and there is no Alleluia.  On Good Friday, the empty tabernacle leaves me feeling bereft and achingly sad.  So when we hear the Alleluia again on Easter, and the carillon bells on the organ ring all the way through the Gloria, I know that he is risen.  He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

My kids never had trouble believing in Jesus' resurrection.  They grew up with the notion of resurrection woven seamlessly into the cloth of their childhood.  Death and resurrection, for them, were inseparable concepts.  My eldest daughter, Lelia, was 3 years old when Pope John Paul II died in the Easter season of 2005.  After the time of the conclave, I announced to her joyfully that we had a pope again.  She cried when she found out that a new man would be sitting on the chair of Peter.  "I thought he came back," she said, speaking of John Paul II, "I thought he came back like Jesus."  How beautiful is the faith and the heart of a child!

"Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain." (1 Cor. 15:12-14)

May All of You Enjoy this Glorious Season of Our Lord's Resurrection!

Bells Photo Credit: $owmya via Compfight cc

Motherhood in the Garden of Gethsemane

In my darkest days, I think that motherhood is doing things that don't matter for people who don't care. Preparing food they refuse to eat, buying clothes they refuse to wear, picking up toys that get thrown back on the floor, teaching them lessons they can't remember and don't want to learn.  Some days, it seems, all my kids and I can say to one another is "No!"  And it all seems utterly futile.

These thoughts, allowed to continue unchecked, drive me down the path to despair.  These thoughts are like the whisperings of the dark angel that taunted and tempted Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane.  You're a failure.  You can't do it.  Some people hate you, and to the rest, you're a nuisance.  They don't care what you've done for them.  No matter how much you sacrifice, they will never love you.

But for Our Lord, the whisperings were worse.  Your people are soaked in sin, it has penetrated to the bone, they will never give it up for you, they won't, they can't, they don't want to.   No matter how many times you tell them, they will never obey; no matter how many miracles you show them, they will never believe.  And under the weight of this agony, Our Lord began to sweat tears of blood.  But in the midst of his agony, there was also an angel of light to minister to him and strengthen him.

What words of comfort did the angel offer to Jesus?  Perhaps, "the Lord is your rock, and your fortress, and your deliverer."  Or, "although you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you need fear no evil."'  Perhaps the angel even promised to Jesus, "Behold, you will make everything new."

Our Lord in the Garden had the freedom to accept his mission or deny it, and he freely chose to follow his father's will.  I, too, have the freedom to make a choice in my mission of motherhood.  I can act as a dark angel or a light angel perching on my children's shoulders.  I do not have to pass my dark, despairing doubts onto them.  I can say, "You can do it, because God will help you,"and "You are loved, because God has loved you."  And perhaps I can spare them my agony.

Google Reader's Pending Demise (News and Notes)

It figures that as soon as I found my Google Reader subscribers, Google would decide to shut the whole thing down. For those of you who haven't heard, Google plans on dismantling Reader by July 1. But functionality is diminishing sooner than you might think. Reader already sporadically disappears from the drop-down menu on the Google toolbar. Switching to an alternative RSS reader sooner rather than later is probably your best bet. I switched to feedly yesterday (no endorsement, just saying). Feedly accessed all the blogs I was following on Google Reader with the press of a single button. So far, no problems, but only time will tell, especially once Reader is finally terminated (/sniff). Good luck to everyone in finding a new RSS reader. If anyone finds one they particularly like, let us know in the comments.

Keeping Adoration in Your Marriage

Our monthly Hot Date Night/Eucharistic Adoration combo has always been special to my husband and me.  When Manny and I began dating, I was Episcopalian and had no idea what Eucharistic Adoration was.  But Manny spent entirely too much time in bars, I thought, so going to church offered a wholesome alternative for Friday night.  A bunch of our friends would regularly gather together in a diner to grab a bite to eat before heading to Our Lady of Peace on 62d Street, Manhattan, at around 9 p.m. on the first Friday of every month.

The Bruschi family, known for their evangelical dynamism, ran the monthly vigil in honor of St. Pio.  Word had it that Papa Bruschi had traveled all the way to Italy for Padre Pio to hear his confession, but Padre Pio had refused to grant  him absolution.  That had changed Papa Bruschi's life.  Organizing this monthly vigil was Papa Bruschi's way to say thank you.  The custom of spending the First Friday of every month in Eucharistic Adoration dates all the way back to the 17th century, when Jesus appeared in a private vision to St. Margaret Mary and encouraged her to begin and promote the practice.  In this same vision, Jesus revealed to St. Margaret Mary, and thus to the world, his Sacred Heart, encircled by a crown of thorns and wounded for our sins.  For me, then, Friday night vigil was a crash course in centuries of Catholic tradition.

The vigil included incensing, which filled the church with fragrant smoke, and a procession around the church with the Eucharist being carried under an umbrellino, or small umbrella, to protect it from anything falling from above.  To our great delight, our friend Steve usually got to carry the umbrellino.  The vigil also incorporated a Mass in which the two beautiful, dark-haired Bruschi daughters sang Gregorian chant and a capella duets from the choir loft high above.  People remained in the church all night in adoration of the Blessed Eucharist, exposed on the altar in the gorgeous golden monstrance.  Manny and I usually left after the first coffee hour, which ended around midnight.  The notable exception was the night he proposed to me, outside the church, on one knee, with a diamond ring in his hand.  There was no way we were going to sleep after that.  We stayed in the church praying until six o'clock the next morning.

After we got married and moved out of the City to Long Island, Manny and I fell out of the habit of going to First Friday vigil.  Then one of our friends gently asked us, "Well, you do something for First Friday, don't you?"  Imagine our surprise when we discovered that our own parish had already held First Friday vigils for many years, based on the format of the Nocturnal Adoration Society.  Thus, we began our new tradition of monthly Hot Date Night combined with Eucharistic Adoration.

For this Year of Faith, the U.S. bishops have asked all Catholics to attend a monthly Eucharistic Adoration for the intentions of life, marriage, and religious liberty.  In a way, Manny and I were doing this already.  But the bishops also recommended reading certain Scriptural passages to help people to meditate on these intentions.  Last month, our parish priest revised the normal vigil format to include some of these passages, and the vigil leader asked me to be the reader.

So, I stood before the assembly and read from the Gospel of John: "If you keep My commandments you will abide in My love ... These things have I spoken to you so that your joy may be complete."  Our parish church had no umbrellino, no choir, and no coffee hour.  But standing beside my husband, before the Holy Eucharist, I could sense the continuity with Catholics throughout the centuries.  And I could feel the unending adoration.

Holding Hands Photo Credit: johnhope14 via Compfight cc

Loving this Liebster Award (News and Notes)

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